The Lost Recipe for Happiness - By Barbara O'Neal Page 0,104
and she couldn’t even think of what she might need. Where would she go? Where would she live? “I really liked this place,” she said plaintively to Julian. “I hate this.”
“I know.” He gently took the bag from her and put it on the floor, then gathered up a handful of panties and bras and tossed them in. “What else? Which drawers have socks?”
Elena knelt and pulled open the drawers methodically, grabbed socks, T-shirts, sports bras for work because they absorbed sweat and let her move freely and also bound her a little more fully in the active environment. From the closet, she took her black jeans, her good boots, a pair of other jeans.
“That’s about it for clothes,” Julian said, pressing neatly folded jeans into one corner of the suitcase. “Toiletries?”
Robotically, Elena moved into the bathroom. Beneath the sink was a makeup bag and she filled it with her small cache of cosmetics—face lotion and cleansers and heavy-duty hand cream and bag balm for when the splits got worse in winter, and cotton gloves she slept in, and a cache of prescription pain pills of varying strengths and a brush. And her toothbrush.
“Come on,” he said. “The police are here, and then we can go get some breakfast.”
“Is he going to be okay, that boy?”
He rubbed her back. “Yeah. He’s fine, Elena. Scared. But fine.”
“That’s good,” she said, and swallowed back a weird swell of tears. “Let’s get this over with.”
After a shower at Julian’s house, Elena shook her head, wincing at Julian’s offer of food. She couldn’t even drink a cup of coffee yet, not until her stomach got over this—whatever it was.
In the meantime, she had to get out of here. Out of Julian’s house. She’d put her bags in the back of her car, had only brought in a change of clothes and her makeup bag. It might be hard to find a new place to rent at the moment, but she knew Patrick had a spare bedroom.
Carrying her cell phone to the snowy deck, she wrapped her scarf around her neck and blew a soft foggy cloud into the sharp morning.
“Good morning, Chef Alvarez,” he answered in a round, orange voice, all juicy happiness. “Are you ready for your big day?”
“Hello, Prince Patrick. I am so ready. How about you?”
“Yes, yes, yes.” He muffled the receiver and spoke to someone in the room with him. A chuckle. She thought she recognized Ivan’s low drum voice, and that made the whole reality of what she was thinking—that she’d just go stay with Patrick in his two-bedroom house—completely unthinkable. Not with a love affair going on between her sous chef and her best friend.
She shuddered faintly, thinking of the night she’d glimpsed Ivan licking Patrick’s face, his long fingers curling up around his skull, as if he were getting ready to devour him, one long lap at a time. No. Not when she had to look at them both at work all day.
“Ivan says hello,” Patrick said. “And asks what time you’ll be getting in this morning.”
“Well,” Elena said, improvising madly, “that’s why I’m calling, actually. There’s been an—uh—incident and I’m running behind. I need Ivan to get over there and make sure the kitchen staff is there and functioning. I called a little while ago and nobody answered.”
Patrick repeated her request, then said, “He said it’s still early, really, but he’ll head over in just a little while.”
“Thanks.”
“What incident, Elena? Are you okay?”
She took a breath, feeling a thick, primeval shudder nudge her bowels, the bottom of her stomach again. “Yeah. My condo is gone, though. Some kid drove into it, right through the front window.”
“No way!”
“Bizarre, huh?”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Alvin’s fine. Ju—we’re all fine,” she said. “The kid isn’t even hurt badly, because he was thrown over the railing of the loft onto the bed.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No,” she said, crossing her arms. A slithering feeling ran down her back, settled into her hip. She shook her shoulders, trying to loosen it all, but the cold was making her hunch. “Look, I’ll give you the rest of the details later. I’ve got to get some more stuff and make sure everything—that I—” She took a breath. “I’m freezing, Patrick, my love. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
“Elena, are you okay, honey?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Really. I’m fine. See you in a couple of hours. Call me if there are any problems.”
She went back inside, letting go of her breath. Julian was typing on his laptop at the